Melanie Van Schoote

I’ve worked here for nearly two years, having previously worked for three years in the pharmaceuticals industry in Belgium, where I am from.

"I’m really proud of working in the pharmaceuticals industry and I’m really proud to be working for Teva."

The reason I chose to follow a career in pharmaceuticals is because I wanted to contribute something positive to society.

The fact is, everyone at some point will need medicine. For me, Teva is all about providing affordable and high-quality medicine. We are producing a lot of generic products, and these ensure medicines are affordable and can reach as many people as possible.

"Caring and improving the lives of the patient is central to Teva. It’s good to know you are making people’s health better. That’s basically why I find the work interesting – everything we do is focused on the patient."

Another reason I really like working here is the positive atmosphere. And it’s not just within my team – it’s across all departments. Everyone is really nice to each other and very supportive.

My job has two big focuses. In terms of compliance, I work to make sure the site follows all the pharmaceutical regulations – that could involve performing audits on site or monitoring changes within the pharmaceutical regulations to make sure we are always on top of them.

In terms of systems, I help to manage and develop quality systems that ensure our products are manufactured in a consistent manner.

As part of this, I’m involved in the system that deals with customer complaints. With every complaint, I co-ordinate an investigation to see what could have gone wrong in our processes to trigger the complaint. I also track the number of complaints to see if they are consistent and we can identify whether something has definitely gone wrong within our processes.

As an example, we noticed we had received a lot of complaints about the packaging of a particular product. We met with the packaging development team to see if we could improve the packaging, came up with a solution and the solution was implemented. That was really satisfying – knowing I had worked towards an improvement of the product.

"Teva certainly supports my career and development goals. There’s a variety of training available. It can be very specific to the pharmaceuticals industry, but there’s also more general training to develop your soft skills."

I’ve done the training on personal effectiveness, and I think it’s really good that Teva wants to support both your personal and professional development.

The characteristics I believe are needed to succeed at Teva are a willingness to learn and a positive mindset. You get a lot of training opportunities here at Teva, but to make the most of them you need to want to learn and be positive about making the most of the opportunities that follow.

Away from work, I like to do yoga and I read a lot.

"The work environment can be quite challenging because there are a lot of regulations that need to be followed, but the company is very good at emphasising the need for a good work/life balance. It’s another reason why I like working here so much."